


All They Need to Know

by Snowfilly1



Series: Valentine's Oneshots 2020 [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Historical, Ineffable Valentines 2020 (Good Omens), M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, wedding vows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22898398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowfilly1/pseuds/Snowfilly1
Summary: They have made their promises so many times over so many centuries that they cannot find the words in the end. They make them in touch; a wing over a demon’s body in the rain and white feathers brushing against star flame hair. A demon’s hands clattering against chains, metal colder than Heaven’s mercy, fingers warm as he pulls the weight of them away from the angel’s legs.A look at the ways they promise their love to each other, throughout history and on their wedding day. For the 'promises' prompt.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Valentine's Oneshots 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1631470
Comments: 13
Kudos: 67
Collections: Ineffable Valentines 2020





	All They Need to Know

**Author's Note:**

> Some implied sexual activity but very minor. 
> 
> Title is gratefully stolen from Neil Gaiman's 'All I know about love,' and slightly paraphrased. It's a beautiful and prosaic love poem he wrote for a wedding.

They have made their promises so many times over so many centuries that they cannot find the words in the end.

They make them in touch; a wing over a demon’s body in the rain and white feathers brushing against star flame hair. A demon’s hands clattering against chains, metal colder than Heaven’s mercy, fingers warm as he pulls the weight of them away and free from the angel’s legs. An arm around shoulders as a son of God dies; the same gesture echoing down the years when the nights are darker than they have any right to be. Fingers across the leather handle of a briefcase, as London burns again and the world burns and their love burns.

Those promises are something like ‘it’s alright. I’m here. Let me share the weight. Let me walk with you. Let me protect you.’ These were the first promises, the strongest, the ones they think on every day.

Scent is a snake’s language; crossing and mingling with taste. Signals given without thinking or knowledge; protectiveness and loyalty and strength and kindness; soldier’s strength tempered by a human’s nature. And the scent of star dust not quite burnt away by Hell; a grace threaded through the remains of him, a flicker of a maker’s power, of a creator and artist.

These ones are more like ‘this is who I am. I love you like this, as best as I can from this form of mine.’ They know, have always known, what each other smells like.

Some of the promises can only be seen. A smile when the other arrives; when there were centuries and continents between their meetings, the same smile now when they wake together. A note left in a certain place; a door left open. A route out of town unguarded by angels, an attack on a city where the hellfire failed to burn a certain inn. Books sprawled in a demon’s room; a Bentley slewed outside a bookshop.

These ones are easy promises. ‘This is my life. Here’s room for you in it. The best bits of it are where we’re sharing. I promise, I will always want you here.’ These are the ones other people see the most.

They make them in taste. In oysters, that Crowley hates because of how they taste and loves because of how he came to taste them. In a hundred thousand shared meals, and more drinks; in a bottle of wine shared at a bus stop after the world didn’t end. In the drag and touch of lips against lips, in kisses that bleed into something deeper and trace down each other’s bodies, and the promise is something like ‘let me make you feel good, let me catch you; I know you, so completely are we joined, let me have and taste all of who you are.’

Those ones are only for them.

They make the promises in ways and forms that have no meaning to humans. In ways that would be meaningless to anything alive save them two. In grand ways, and tiny ways, and when it comes to making them formally, for each other to hear, they stumble.

There are no witnesses, unless stars count. There are rings; one made from imagination and the ether; the other made and remade a hundred times in a forge, engraved by hand. There will be cake. There is a garden, silent under a night sky.

But there are no vows. How could there be words enough to shape what they offer each other? They know, and that is enough. Beyond enough.

‘I love you, Aziraphale. Have since Eden. Will always love you.’

‘I love you, my Crowley. I’ll always love you.’

And that isn’t a promise, but the barest truth, and that is all they need to know.

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley made Aziraphale's ring by hand. Aziraphale dreamt Crowley's up out of thin air. Neither of them can remember who organised the cake, but it was there in the cottage when they went back indoors, and they lived happily ever after.


End file.
